So how can we continue to help reduce and prevent violent crime in our communities?

First, as with most societies’ ills, the key to curbing crime is not more government expansion and spending. Nor is the answer dissolving our Second Amendment rights; countries with super-strict gun ownership laws have equally violent crimes and also proved that taking guns from good guys doesn’t prohibit bad guys from obtaining them. Our Founding Fathers had a far better solution than more government and taking away guns from law-abiding citizens.

Though our founders initiated our government, they didn’t expect it [government] or the law of the land to establish and maintain civility. As proud as they were of their newfound republic, they would turn to and trust in God and “We the People” to usher in life, liberty, happiness, decency, respect, morality, honesty and restraint, to name a few.

George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address about a time in America’s future in which we might be tempted to discard the pillars of civility: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Curbing violent crime is still more about what we do than it is about what government does. The answer is still more about nature’s law within us than it is about man’s law outside of us.

We must return to being a nation in which mutual respect is king — in which I am my brother’s keeper and we agree to disagree agreeably. It’s time to renew our commitment to the basic premise of humanity: Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.